M. Jean Pease, USAID Employee

M. Jean Pease, 83, who retired in 1986 as a program director with United States Agency for International Development, died Oct. 17 at her home in Fairfax City. She had pancreatic cancer.

Mrs. Pease began working for the federal government in 1950 and spent the majority of her career working for USAID focused on international health programs.

She became a program director of the comprehensive Medex guide for training and management of health personnel working abroad.

Marrilee Jean Williams was born in Oak Park, Ill., and raised in West Lafayette, Ind. She was a 1950 graduate of Purdue University in Indiana.

She helped start the women's golf team at Purdue. As a young woman, she toured as an amateur golfer and played with some of the top women professional golfers of the era, including "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias.

Mrs. Pease also played an exhibition match with the golfing great Byron Nelson, her family said.

Mrs. Pease was a member of Burke Lake women's golf league and, at 72, scored a hole-in-one, her family said.

Her other memberships included the Anglican Truro Church in Fairfax City, where she was active in the altar guild and was a leader of the seniors ministry.

Her husband of 35 years, Stewart S. Pease, died in 1995. Their daughter Mary Ann Pease died in 1990.

Survivors include two daughters, Virginia Raley of Strasburg, Va., and Sarah Pease of Fairfax City; and three brothers.

- Adam Bernstein